


Into Oblongs

by voleuse



Category: Bones
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-14
Updated: 2008-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:29:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voleuse/pseuds/voleuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>One grandmother recognized her, seeing this head, painted, cast in plaster.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Into Oblongs

**Author's Note:**

> No spoilers. Title and summary adapted from Tina Barr's _Ministry_.

Angela never pretended this was what she wanted to do with her life.

In college, she took anatomy courses because her advisor told her she deserved more than three courses in life drawing, watching bored drama students pose under fluorescent lighting. She took a year's worth of anatomy and physiology, then a year's worth of gross anatomy, and by the end of the sequence, half of the biology department was in love with her, and she knew she didn't mind the smell of formaldehyde as long as there was lemon-scented soap in her near future.

She dated a detective once, and he told her about a body they had found, too decayed to make a proper ID. She put her sandwich down ("And I'm done with the pastrami, thanks") and asked him whether they'd hired someone to do reconstruction. He looked at her, almost smirking, and that was the last date they had.

The next week, of course, she watched his press conference on TV, watched him present the evidence. She spent half the time criticizing the sketch their artist had composed, because the slope of the jaw was _all wrong_, and the blond hair pure conjecture.

Angela never pretended this was what she wanted to do with her life, but she knew she did it well, and she couldn't imagine anyone else working with Temperance without having a nervous breakdown.

She tried not to touch the bodies (they always told her to say _the remains_, but she couldn't do it, not in her head), but even when she entered the data into her graphics programs, all vectors and planes and what-ifs, she could feel the gritty cool of polished bone beneath her fingertips.

She stared at the renderings for hours. They asked her to reposition the forms, play out possible movement in the minutes before a murder. She could do more; she could make the victim seem alive again.

She didn't need to try--it was the play she saw behind her eyes, every morning, every night. The way the others could look at fragments and dirt and tell her exactly what the victim did for a living, when the victim had played sports, why the victim probably stopped while walking.

She could show them the victim's smile, but she didn't. Some pains, she thought, were best kept private, and small.


End file.
